


complication with optimistic outcome

by orphan_account



Category: Constantine (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-31
Updated: 2015-01-31
Packaged: 2018-03-09 22:03:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3265955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time that John touches him--really touches him, not just a pat on the back or bumping of shoulders as they walked--Ritchie looks startled, like a rabbit whose owner had finally decided to be gentle after months of tossing him around.</p><p>He relaxes into it the next time--into the hand on his face--and he closes his eyes, sighing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	complication with optimistic outcome

**Author's Note:**

> This is super short and is probably not that terrific but after I finished the most recent episode, I was feeling a lot of gross emotions about Ritchie and about these two and their relationship and I knew I had to write _something_.

Ritchie is nothing but bones but he radiates heat as if there are a thousand tiny hot plates jammed under his skin. He dresses in layers and John asks him once if he ever needed to take them off, if they ever felt like too much. Ritchie takes it as John coming onto him and laughs nervously. (John was, maybe, a little, but that's besides the point.) John thinks it might mean something but he's never been one to pick at other people's scabs unless necessary.

"They're just clothes," Ritchie would say, and then pull them closer to himself like he thinks John is going to take them away. (He wouldn't, for the record. Only if Ritchie wanted him to.)

\- -

The first time that John touches him--really touches him, not just a pat on the back or bumping of shoulders as they walked--Ritchie looks startled, like a rabbit whose owner had finally decided to be gentle after months of tossing him around.

He relaxes into it the next time--into the hand on his face--and he closes his eyes, sighing.

\- -

They share a bed a few times because that's just the way things happen with friends (or whatever the hell the two of them were).

Ritchie always starts on his side with his back to John but, somehow, every morning (or afternoon, or evening depending on when they had fallen asleep to begin with, because neither of them particularly kept a nine-to-five type of schedule), John wakes up warm and sweaty, wakes up to find Ritchie impossible tangled up in him to the point that it takes him a few minutes to figure out which limbs belong to which person.

\- -

It's been a long time since any of that has happened, mostly because time is a son-of-a-bitch but also because Ritchie doesn't want a single thing to do with John anymore.

John wants to understand it and maybe a part of him does, but then he remembers everything and he realizes that understanding is bullshit and he'd rather claw at Ritchie's door like a starving cat until he lets John back inside.

\- -

After dimension traveling and managing to save at least one life that wasn't their own, John sets the girl up on a couch and Ritchie says that he's going home, that he needs to go, so long and thanks for all the fish. He's made it to the stairs but John notices, watches as Ritchie can barely keep himself standing up straight (it's different from the way he normally holds himself, hunched over and trying to take up as little space as possible) and tells him to stop.

The words work but it's probably because Ritchie didn't really want to leave (or, at least, that's what John tells himself) and he hesitates, waiting until John is right behind him before turning around. They're close, so close, and Ritchie sighs.

"I'll take you back in tomorrow," John says. "Come to bed." Ritchie shuts his eyes and exhales slowly, leans forward and presses the side of his head against John's, says something quietly under his breath, so quiet that John can't hear it but then he says, a little louder:

"Okay."


End file.
